in 2000 nine, president obama nominated her for solicitor general of the united states and she served in that office for a asr and was then nominated an associate justice of the supreme court. 2010ook that position in of filled the vacancy justice john paul stevens who, after his retirement, was our last lecture here at the law school. those are the vital statistics. i want to tell you something personal about her and i brought this along so i could read it. this year in time, she was named as one of their most -- 100 most influential people in the world. read to you what they had to say about our speaker today. "elena kagan the persuader. a lot of people like to talk about the swing court but every supreme court justice has one vote to cast and eight colleagues. what makes a justice particularly influential is the ability to persuade the others to agree and that depends on the effectiveness of the justices reasoning. in that respect, elena kagan has what it takes to be a highly influential supreme court justice. she has demonstrated herself to be an incisive legal thinker, both in he